Emmanuel Vanbrussel

Two months after Mario Draghi urged the creation of a unified European capital market, stock exchange operator Euronext has announced future plans that will likely be music to the former ECB chief’s ears.

Czech Banka Creditas has made a binding takeover bid for the Maltese group over online bank MeDirect. Behind Banka Creditas is relatively unknown billionaire Pavel Hubáček.

The American investment giant Goldman Sachs is closing its Belgian fund, Goldman Sachs (B) Invest. The last compartment will be transferred to a fund in Luxembourg through a cross-border merger.

In Belgium, less than 10 percent of the 410 members of the CFA Society are women. ‘Bitterly few,’ concludes Maud Reinalter, CIO of Belfius Asset Management. When a woman applies for a fund manager position, 200 percent of the profile matches. A male candidate applies when he meets only 80 percent of the requirements.

European asset managers must pursue economies of scale to stay competitive with their US counterparts, argues Vincent Juvyns, a market strategist at JP Morgan Asset Management. Fragmentation across Europe’s capital markets is also a key issue that hinders competitiveness, he says.

Euroclear, the Brussels-based securities custodian and settlement giant, has taken a significant step forward in the private markets space by securing a partnership with BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager.

The largest maturity date in Belgium’s financial history. That is how Peter Adams, CEO of ING Belgium, describes today’s expiry of the much-debated one-year state note, on 4 September.